


Remember Me (Think of Me Fondly)

by Avengerz



Series: Jungle Cats [3]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Black Panther (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Explicit Language, F/M, Fem!Tony, Fluff, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Suicide Contemplation, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other, Temporary Amnesia, Were-Creatures, lil bit of, shifter!Tony, very brief though I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7196099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avengerz/pseuds/Avengerz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toni wakes up in a hospital, which isn't too unfamiliar a situation. The giant hunk of metal in her chest is new, though, as is the prince that's claiming to be her boyfriend.</p><p>Toni thinks she might be missing something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember Me (Think of Me Fondly)

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on tumblr!
> 
> I'm playing really fast and loose with the timelines in this one, but basically Toni didn't become Iron Man right after she escaped from Afghanistan, mainly because it happened earlier in her personal timeline (for some reason idk just go with it.) Obadiah Stane was arrested by SHIELD and she decided to become Iron Man after she started dating T'Challa.
> 
> Technically a sequel for "I Don't Need a Knight in Shining Armor (I need you)" but can probably be read alone with the understanding that Toni is a werepanther and is dating T'Challa.

Toni wakes up in a hospital.

For a moment, she keeps her eyes shut and breathes deep against the weight of paper-thin sheets.

This is not an unusual occurrence for her, unfortunately. Really, it’s happened far too often over the past three years since she moved out of the house. Howard scoffs and mutters about attention-seeking and her mom sighs and strokes her hair back from her face and Toni doesn’t know what it is, really, why she drinks and smokes and sleeps with any guy that calls her pretty. The press calls her a slut and so does Howard and she laughs at them all.

Toni’s a little fucked up in the head, she thinks.

This time is different. Usually she has at least a hazy recollection of the night before, even if it’s just the beginning of the night and the first three drinks.

But this time there’s nothing, a total blank in her memory. It’s disturbing, unnerving to animal instincts she pretends not to have. Toni always has at least an idea of what she’s done to end up in the hospital, even the time she got so drunk she jumped into an empty swimming pool and broke her ankle and three ribs. (She told the doctors she doesn’t remember the incident, doesn't remember why she did it, but she does.)

And there’s no doubt that she’s in a hospital. Toni recognizes the dry smell of antiseptic, the flat pillow beneath her head, the steady _beep beep beep_ of the heart monitor. She just doesn’t know why she’s here, especially because all that seems to be wrong with her is a mild headache.

There’s only one way to find out what’s going on, Toni figures, and she opens her eyes.

The ceiling above her is white, plain and boring. Typical. Toni blinks at it and feels the burn of eyes too long closed. She sighs, and something catches in her chest. She chokes at the weight of it, a block of something hard and _foreign_ in her chest. She clutches at her chest, and there’s metal under her fingers. What is it, what is this, why is it, it’s _in her_ , what happened-

Distantly, Toni hears the heart monitor wail.

“Be calm, _katana,_ it is okay, you are safe!” There’s a voice, concerned, almost frantic, and a hand in hers, and it’s enough to shock Toni into taking a full breath. She turns her head to stare, wide-eyed, at the man at her bedside. Toni knows royalty when she sees it, and this man practically screams it, from the line of his nose to the tone of his voice to the graceful way he carries himself, even as he kneels at her side and clutches at her hand. He is royal, gorgeous, and completely unfamiliar.

She takes a moment to breathe and study the man, this man who feels it’s his right to kneel at her bedside, to hold her hand as if they know each other.

Toni gets the feeling that she’s missing something.

She pulls her away, firmly extricating her fingers and forcing herself to ignore the gutted expression that crosses the man’s face. What right does he have to feel hurt? Toni pushes herself upright and tries not to notice the object in her chest shifting against her ribs at the movement.

“Who are you,” she demands, “and what are you doing here?”

The man leans back a little, an expression of shock erasing the hurt on his face. “Oh,” he says quietly, and Toni’s definitely missing something.

She frowns, unease curling in her chest. She brushes the metal in her chest with gentle fingers as if to soothe it. “What’s going on?”

He stares at her in silence for a moment, apparently lost. “ _Katana-_ ” he starts, but then the door opens (she’s in a private room, Toni belatedly realizes, but she hadn’t been expecting anything else). A woman Toni doesn’t recognize enters, her heels clicking against the marble floor. Her attention is on something small and black in her hands, and Toni feels her breath catch in her throat because it almost looks like a mobile phone, but it’s _tiny_ and it doesn’t have any buttons and Toni is _definitely_ missing something.

“What the hell,” she blurts, and the woman’s head jerks up. A wide grin spreads across her face at the sight of Toni, and before Toni really understands what’s happening, she’s striding across the room towards her, long red hair blowing behind her, and enveloping Toni in a hug.

For a moment Toni can only freeze because first of all _what the hell,_ why are these strangers trying to touch her and secondly, this never happens, people don’t just touch her, don’t just hold her hand, don’t just hug her freely and easily like this. Not unless they want something, at least, and Toni’s instantly on her guard.

She tries to pull back from the woman, who’s saying something about how glad she is that Toni’s okay (what happened?), but the man is already on it. He gently pulls her arms from around Toni, murmuring a, “not now, Pepper, something’s wrong.”

Toni scrambles back from them both, pushing herself to the corner of the bed and watching them warily. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what’s going on, but I can tell you right now that Howard’s not going to shell out any money for me, so if you’re looking for a ransom you’re shit out of luck.”

Silence reigns as Pepper and the man stare at her. Toni eyes the door. It’s not locked, as far as she can tell, but they’re blocking the way. If she’s fast enough, though, she can evade them and make her escape. And Toni is far faster than the average human being, when she wants to be. She tenses, preparing to leap off the bed, but then the man speaks.

“We have not kidnapped you, Toni, nor do we seek to harm you.” He shares a glance with Pepper, and Toni looks back and forth between the two of them, cautiously. The man sighs as he looks back to her. “You’ve been in an accident, _katana._ That’s why you’re in the hospital and that’s why-” He breaks off and Toni watches his hands clenching in the sheets. “That is why you do not remember us.”

* * *

 

Toni doesn’t believe it at first. She scoffs when they tell her it’s 2016, over twenty years in the future, and then she gets scared because Pepper shows her the cell phone, a piece of tech she’d only started dreaming of, and a doctor brings in a newspaper and a prognosis of amnesia. It’s an elaborate prank, too elaborate, which means it must be real.

Toni stares down at her hands, tanned and calloused against the sheets and unfamiliar in a body that barely feels like her own, and reminds herself to breathe. It’s impractical to run, even as the beast inside her longs for it. This isn’t something she can escape, even with fur and claws.

Toni can feel concerned gazes on the side of her head and she shudders under the weight of it all. “So what happened?” she asks quietly. “How did I get this?” Toni gently brushes her fingertips over the glowing hunk of metal in her chest, afraid to press on it lest it becomes real.

“That is from years ago,” the man says, and some unconscious part of Toni relaxes at his smooth voice. “You were attacked by a band of terrorists after a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan. You were struck by shrapnel, and that device, the arc reactor, keeps the shrapnel in your blood stream from piercing your heart.”

“It’s generating an electromagnetic field,” Toni murmurs to herself. She remembers the arc reactor, the pet project of Howard’s that was deemed impractical a few years ago. She must have figured out how to miniaturize it. She focuses on that, on the science and the technology, because she can’t bring herself to think about the rest.

Toni looks up again, faces the naked concern in these stranger’s faces. “So who are you? Why are you here?” She hadn’t honestly expected Howard to show up, and her mom usually followed along with whatever Howard decided to do, but she doesn’t know what she’s done to earn their presence at her side.

“I’m Virginia Potts, but you always call me Pepper.” Pepper cracks a smile at that, but it’s sad. “You hired me to be your personal assistant a few years ago.” Oh, right. Howard’s probably retired at this point, so Toni’s in charge of Stark Industries. That’s a little terrifying.

Toni swallows back the panic clawing at her throat (she’s only nineteen, or at least she feels like it, and she’s _not prepared_ to lead a company like SI) and turns her gaze on T’Challa. “And you? Do you work for me too?” This makes a little more sense, Toni thinks. Of course they’d visit Toni in the hospital if she was paying them.

“No.” The man shares another glance with Pepper, and Toni _hates_ this, hates being the one out of the loop, hates feeling lost and thrown-off because she can’t remember anything about the last twenty years. She resists the urge to snarl as the man finally answers. “I am T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, prince of Wakanda.” Toni frowns at him, irritation shifting to puzzlement, because sure, she’s met royalty before, slept with several princes (and princesses, because they were cute and she loves the expression Howard gets when scandals like that hit the papers), but she can’t imagine why the prince of Wakanda would visit her in the hospital.

“Okay?” Toni glances at Pepper, who looks exasperated. “Are you here for a weapons deal or something?”

“No!” T’Challa seems almost offended at the idea, and Toni raises her eyebrows. T’Challa looks away, and Toni doesn’t think she imagines the blush that darkens his skin. “I am your-your _isoka_ .” Toni just stares at him. He frowns and tries again. “You are my _Nkosazana,_ my _intande._ ”

“Sorry,” Toni says slowly, “I don’t speak Wakandan.”

Pepper rolls her eyes so hard that Toni wonders if it hurts. “Oh, stop being such an idiot, T’Challa.” Then she turns to Toni. “He’s your boyfriend.”

Toni looks between the two of them, her personal assistant and the prince of Wakanda, and bursts out laughing.

* * *

 

She stops laughing pretty quickly, because apparently even stranger things have happened than her somehow settling into a committed, monogamous relationship. Turns out Toni stopped weapons development at SI, which Toni isn’t too torn up about but which Howard would hate. That’s not much of a concern either, though, because her parents are dead. As if that’s not enough, Uncle Obie organized the attack on her convoy that led to her new piercing and he’s now spending the rest of his life in a shady pseudo-government agency’s prison. Oh, and Toni decided to become a fucking superhero and fly around in suit of golden-titanium iron because why the hell not? Being thrown into buildings by mass-murdering robots is part of the superhero gig, Toni gathers, and that’s why she’s here.

Toni stares hard at the light blue pattern of the blanket and wills away the burn of tears. T’Challa holds her hand and Toni doesn’t shake him away.

The light streaming through the window is the golden tint of pre-sunset, and nurses have come to check her vitals a half-dozen times over the course of their conversation. Toni watches the light creep across the room, up the side of her bed, onto their tangled fingers. Pepper’s phone rings and she excuses herself with a sad smile and a promise to visit tomorrow.

T’Challa does not leave even as the room darkens into shadows. He sits with her in the silence and he does not say anything as her hand shakes in his with the force of her silent sobs.

Hours later, when the room is lit only by the dim glow of monitoring equipment, Toni leans into his side and T’Challa squeezes her hand. “We will figure this out,” he says, barely above a whisper. “We will be okay.”

Toni her head into his shoulder, breathes in sandalwood and fresh earth and a steady heartbeat, and lets herself believe him.

* * *

It isn’t T’Challa who helps her remember. He tries, of course, leaves his duties and his people in Wakanda to show her around the tower she supposedly built and the AI she supposedly created (and _damn,_ she’s a genius). She recognizes Dummy and the bottles of scotch at the bar and that’s it.

He holds her hand and whispers endearments against her palms, but she doesn’t know what they mean.

He shows her pictures of them together, a press photo of them dancing, a “selfie” at central park, a shot from JARVIS’s security cameras of Toni curled up next to T’Challa as a panther. She nearly has a panic attack at that, has to be held and told that she isn’t a monster to be feared and avoided, and she begins to understand why she loves this man, but she  doesn’t remember.

T’Challa tries, but Rhodey succeeds.

It’s early in the morning. T’Challa is making pancakes and Toni watches and wishes she could remember this, remember a hundred mornings like this, days when she must have been happy and loved. It’s a depressing line of thought, and she scratches idly at a vein in the marble counter top and tries not to think of much of anything.

The elevator dings, and Toni leans toward the open arch of the kitchen to see who it is. She’s expecting Pepper, maybe, or that big guy who drove them home from the hospital. She hasn’t met anyone else, and Toni gets the feeling that they’re limiting her exposure to the outside world. Probably for the best. She never paid much attention to Howard’s lectures about her scandals and the effect they had on Stark Industries’s stock value, but she can guess that the general public wouldn’t trust a tech manufacturer who’s forgotten the last twenty years of her life.

None of that matters now, though, because for the first time Toni is seeing a familiar face. The lines in his face are carved deeper, and Toni spots a few gray hairs, but it’s still unmistakably her best friend.

“Rhodey!” Toni jumps from her chair and a broad grin spreads across Rhodey’s face.

“Hey Tones! I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner, apparently ‘idiot best friend lost her memory’ doesn’t count as a valid reason for leave in the Air Force’s books.” Toni’s barely listening to what he’s saying, tuning it out the way she’s heard most people tune her out. What matters is that he’s here.

Toni grins and runs across the room towards him and he steps towards her and-

And.

And suddenly they’re not in the comfortable living room penthouse.

Suddenly there’s sand beneath her feet and she collapses to her knees and feels it dig into her skin.

Suddenly there’s a blinding sun above them and her skin blisters beneath it and her lips crack and she’s too weak to shift, wearied by months of abuse and days spent at the end of a short chain, yowling and clawing at her laughing tormentors and her fur would do her no good in this heat anyways, her claws no use against the unforgiving sun.

Suddenly Rhodey’s there, appearing with a wide grin and a joke and the promise of safety.

Suddenly, Toni remembers.

* * *

 

When she comes back to herself, Toni is hunched over a wastebasket and T’Challa is stroking her back as she empties the contents of her stomach into it. She gags and tries to spit out the taste of ignorance, of torture, of betrayal, of poison seeping through her veins.

Toni can feel Rhodey nearby, his concern a near-physical thing, but T’Challa is a line of calm at her back and she sighs heavily and leans back into him.

“Man,” Toni says, her voice wrecked. “And here I thought I had issues before.”

T’Challa chuckles and presses a kiss to her temple. “I told you we would be okay, _katana._ ”

Toni breathes in the scent of the jungle and allows herself to believe him.

* * *

 

Later, Rhodey will brag about his “vital role” in returning Toni’s memories and she’ll roll her eyes and make out with T’Challa until Rhodey begs them to stop for the sake of “those of us who are still unhappily single.” Toni will laugh at him and T’Challa will hide his grin in a kiss to the crown of her head and Toni will be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Italicized words are [Xhosa,](http://www.gononda.com/xhosa/) which MCU is using as the language of Wakanda.  
> Katana: kitten  
> Isoka: boyfriend  
> Nkosozana: princess  
> Intande: beloved
> 
> Feel free to prompt more IronPanther at the new [ImagineIronPanther](http://imagineironpanther.tumblr.com) blog, or come say hi at my personal [tumblr!](http://anthonyfuckingstark.tumblr.com)
> 
> I absolutely adore comments, just sayin'.


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